Women & Politics

Do modern roadblocks prevent women from replicating Nancy Pelosi's rise in politics? One columnist says yes.

Pelosi, the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was an at-home mom with five children and didn’t rejoin the workforce until her youngest child had nearly finished with high school. But Huffington Post blogger Lisa Belkin [1] says that women today can’t take as long of career break as Pelosi did and still expect to make it big in the workforce.

“Pelosi, now 71, was [a trailblazer for women],” Belkin wrote. “So were Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, 81, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 78. Both graduated from law school during the 1950s, then spent years on the slow career track or as a stay-at-home mother, and came roaring back when their children were older.”

“That route, however,” Belkin asserted, “isn’t really open to women any more. If today’s young women were to do the same - have their children young, expect to get started on a career when those children were grown - they would emerge to closed doors.”

“I don’t have any idea how people have kids and jobs,” Pelosi told a gathering of Huffington Post staffers. “Some days I just didn’t wash my face.”